GracePoint Publishing is a traditional publishing company – with a twist.
We are collaborative and work with our authors to promote their books, their message, and their work in the world.
Just like traditional publishers, we don’t charge for publishing. We accept completed manuscripts for review and one of our acquisition editors will then make contact and discuss next steps. We may identify needs within the manuscript like development, deep or light editing, fact-checking, and other publishing obstacles.
GracePoint publishes books, ebooks, audio books, podcasts, videos and courses. We specialize in subjects such as Human Design, New Economy, Quantum Thought, Inspirational, and Health and Wellness. We focus on inspirational non-fiction, business, and personal development and also have faith-based press and an inspirational children’s press.
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FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Hi and welcome. I’m Michelle Vandepas with grace point publishing. And here with me is Karen Curry Parker also from grace point publishing. Hi, Karen
Michelle. We’re excited to talk to you guys today about the mission and the purpose of your book and some quick short things you can do to get yourself started in writing and or publishing. Yeah,
Absolutely. First let’s just talk for a minute about who we are for those of you who don’t know us right. There may be a few. I’m Michelle I’m Karen, and we are looking for people who want to build a quantum world. Talk about that. Karen, we have,
And watching the world of personal growth and development and the world of transformational teachings for between the two of us, more than 60 years together, we have both been in publishing for that same amount of time. I started my first publishing company when I was 20. I think you started yours somewhere around that same time, Michelle, over the course of working with all the different permutations of publishing, writing, being published, authors, being best-selling, authors, being book coaches, helping people find their voice, which is what you and I have both done over the course of our professional careers in many different ways. What we really landed on is in the last few years is that there is a new voice that is necessary in this world, that the personal growth and development industry, the transformation industry, the consciousness and spirituality industry, the practical living lifestyle industry is needing a new voice, a new body of information.
And we really work to support the emergence of this new voice, which means we really work with authors who have a mission and a purpose to bring change into the world in many, many different ways. So we publish authors who talk about sustainable living, who talk about diet and ways in which you can work to heal and maintain your body. We talk about, we have published authors who have created work around how to sustain and maintain health and wellbeing, how to clear trauma, how to be trauma informed, how to create a good and strong and grounded sustainable life based on not only consciousness, but practices and rituals that you can implement on a daily basis to help you deepen your connection to the earth and to be practical in how you manifest in the world. We are looking for authors and we want to represent authors who want to talk about how do we change the economy and make it more equitable and just, and sustainable for everyone we have over the last year, actually given away thousands of dollars worth of scholarships and trainings to people who have what we would call marginalized voices, people who are not traditionally represented in the publishing arena, people who are bringing forth ideas and voices from the, the, the black community from the mile and native community, from the, the the LGBTQ community who are really looking to use the power of their story, to give people resources, to begin to change this world and to make it more sustainable and more equitable adjust.
We call this the quantum world. And if you have something that you want to share that you know is going to serve the evolution of the planet and create a quantum world, we want to hear your ideas.
I love that we’ve actually given away more than $250,000 worth of scholarships in just the last six months or so. And we do believe that together, we can grow this network, right? Karen, you and I are doing our parts you’re publishing and helping people really get clear on their voice and their piece, but everyone else has their own piece too. Totally, absolutely. So I’m going to talk a little bit about your book and the purpose, and I’m going to take this on for a minute. Karen, they, your book has to have a purpose in and of itself, right? So part of the purpose of the book might be to help you share your voice, your mission, to help you leave a legacy, to help you get more exposure. But it also is here to help you connect with potential readers and in an audio book listeners and in a video book Watchers, right now, we publish all kinds of ways, but the book has its own purpose.
So your purpose might be to really fulfill your destiny of sharing your voice and mission. And the book’s purpose is to connect with the people that need to hear that. And so, as you are working on a structure for your book, you always want to think about what is the purpose of the book? Is it really just to get people to come to my website is the purpose of the book to help elevate the author to a new place, to give the author more visibility. Is it a place to publish our research? You know, Renee Brown, one of her first books was just about getting her research out there and getting feedback. There’s a lot of different reasons to publish a book. And if you can tune into that a little bit, it will help you structure the book in such a way that there’s a clear message.
There’s a clear reason to write the book may have more than one book in you, but start with this one, just to ask, you can ask your book. Are you the one? Are you the book that I’m here that I’m called to write right now, many people have more than one book in them. Just ask, just tune in and ask your intuitive self, which book is the next book? Which book is the book I’m here to write right now. And what is the purpose of that book to help me, my voice, my mission, my purpose, and how will the book do that? So you might want to write a book. If you want to build your audience. You’re in business. You’re a speaker coach. We want to build a solid foundation of, of new people. You have something to sell, right? A book is a great way to get that out.
If you have an inspirational message or a story, and you can use a book for all kinds of ways in business to, to generate leads, to send people to your website, I’ve even known people. Who’ve used a book as an expanded business card, really a long sales letter. That’s okay. As long as you know, that’s what you’re doing and you set up the book that way, there’s nothing more frustrating than thinking. You’re here to do an inspirational story. And then it turns out to be a sales letter or vice versa, just be clear on the intention. So the book flows, I also give you more credibility and visibility in your field, and you can use a book to give away as a bonus to clients, right? You can do all kinds of things and it will definitely elevate your authority in the marketplace.
I also want to add one thing to that. One things that I use my books for in my practice is to, I give it to clients, to help me, or to keep me from having to repeat the things that I say to every single client. So if I’m telling, you know, if I have a set of information that every client gets, when I can just hand them a book, it allows me to actually be more present to my clients because I’m not doing basic teaching. They already have that information ahead of time. And so when we do sessions together, we can actually dive in and go deep much faster.
I’m so glad you brought that up because we also have clients who’ve created courses from their book or taken their course, and we’ve created a book from that.
And so, yeah, and one of the things that we do that we love to help people with is to repurpose all that material, because we know that, you know, Stephen King is an aberration. Most people aren’t going to make their living from their book, but there’s a way to use your book to really tap into your income stream and increase your impact. And we’ve, we’ve actually been developing different ways that we can add multimedia to your books so that your book becomes this multimedia sort of interactive program, if you will, or process for your readers and they get to engage with you and really connect with you in many different ways, not, you know, beyond just the words on the page,
Right book, like we talked about earlier, a lot of ways to publish material. So talk about the, the purpose, the author’s purpose.
Well, this is, this is a really, you know, a beautiful piece because I really think that as the writer, your purpose is to serve as the steward for the inspiration. You are here to embody, if you will, an idea and transmit it. And, you know, I’ve, I think that if we can start as writers and authors begin to take the role of being here to basically be a scribe for the divine use and really serve that inspiration and see that our purpose is to serve that inspiration. First of all, it makes it a lot easier to, I think, to serve from that place. And it takes all of our ego and our not enoughness and all that other stuff that sometimes gets kicked up in the writing process out of the way, because it’s not, you, it’s not, you have to get it right. Or you have to be the first one, or you have to it’s you serving an inspirational flow.
And if you can stay in alignment with that flow, it really lets you be in the flow of that writing, whatever it might be, whether it’s your story, whether it’s your life experiences, whether it’s something you want to share information when share even literally researched data, because even from like creating the data or discovering the data or interpreting the data, we’re also serving, I think the Loyce of the muse or the voice of creative inspiration that works through us to keep evolving the world of information so that we can have a different foundation upon which to build something better on this planet.
Mm, beautiful. What about a Y?
Yeah. Well, I think this is, this is this is probably a place where you and I are very different from a lot of people, because a lot of times, you know, people, book coaches, authors, publishers, they’ll tell you, well, you can’t write your book Tiggy. Now. You’re why you got to know why you’re doing it. You got to know, and you know, your, why don’t you? It would be nice if inspiration was delivered like that, right. Here’s your why? This is the instruction manual that goes with it. This is your purpose in the grand scheme of the cosmos. And the truth is sometimes we don’t know why we just have a call and we feel it and we don’t know the bigger purpose of it. And, and, and that’s okay. You don’t have to wait until, you know, the why you don’t have to wait until the bigger picture reveals itself. It probably will, along the way. I mean, honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever worked with an author where at the end, they’re like, I don’t really know what I did this, but, but there’s a, you know, there’s a, you don’t have to have that piece on the front end, just keep the call and follow the call and see what happens.
See what happens. We’re going to talk about that some more. All right. So how do you set yourself up for success? Because one of the things I hear is I published a book a few years ago, sold a few copies on Amazon and then blue, right? Went the Amazon boy, the dark hole. I think the first thing is to really be clear about what your story is and how it’s going to inspire and help others. So in order for your book to be a success, it’s just like writing sales copy or running a business, you have to think about what’s in it for the reader. It’s yes. It’s about you. And it may be your story or what you’re teaching, but what is the reader going to get? What is it that you want the reader to walk away from with maybe a feeling, maybe a call to action.
It may be inspired that keep your reader in your mind’s eye the whole time. And that’s how you’re really going to set up for success by thinking about your reader more than, Oh my gosh, I’m such a terrible writer. I don’t like this. This first draft sucks. I’m going to throw all this away. I can’t possibly show this to my editor or coach. Right. We get all my stuff in there. And so it’s like what Karen was saying. Think about serving. Think about following the flow of inspiration, stay in that place to set up for success. Yeah.
I always tell my clients, here’s your mantra when you’re feeling nervous, focus on the service.
Well, I like that. Yeah. So who needs your book, Karen? Well,
You know, I think that that’s a big question and I think the first thing you only have to identify is who’s going to be served by this book. Who’s going to really want to read this book and who are your perfect readers and, and really having that in mind, again, as part of the service is huge. And one of the things I always recommend that people do in the beginning, especially if you’re like, ah, I don’t, how do I get myself going on? This is start first by writing a love letter to your potential reader, really like reach out to that reader and tell them what you would love to tell them if you were sitting down and having tea together somewhere. I mean, or if you were, you know, connecting and talking over the phone, really imagine yourself sitting in a, not, you know, not in an authoritative way, like over your client, like they’re, they’re down here.
You don’t have to put on the whole, I’m an expert disguise, just simply sit down with your reader and say, what would you tell them? How would you help them know that it’s going to be okay or that you’ve been through it? And because you’ve been through it, they’re going to get through it to whatever the it might be, or, you know, what, what do you want them to do once you deliver the big takeaway? And, and I think if you stay in that space of just being in communion, if you will, with your reader, you’ll figure out pretty quickly who actually needs that book.
So talk to me, I want to ask you a question, Karen, talk to me because we hear all the stuff out there, all the, you got to create your avatar. You’ve got to know who your perfect client is and make sure you create this image of who you’re going to sell to. Before you start writing, before you start selling. I like this. In fact, I love this love letter idea. Tell me how it’s different.
Well, I think why it makes it different is because you take off all the parameters that, you know, and, and I, I, you know, this is what I teach even with, with business training and even building your business plan, this whole idea of having like this little tiny definable niche, you know, that might’ve been great in the early two thousands. And even, you know, that was kind of what we taught. And that was sort of how, in the first beginning days of internet marketing, you kind of needed to know where are we going to shoot off your emails to, and where are we going to find your potential clients? But I don’t think we’re in that age anymore. I actually believe in you. And I talk about this a lot that that was in the beginning of the, or rather maybe the end of the age of information.
And we’re kind of done with the age of information to a certain degree. I think we’re really moving into the age of inspiration. And as we move into this creative revolution in this age of inspiration, it takes off some of the shackles of having to like define your reader as this teeny tiny little person who is 34 years old, who only uses American express on Saturdays and has to be dogs. You know, you get to decide the mission and the purpose of your book and who your reader is and to do the love letter piece, really, I think sort of calls in not this little defined tight niche, but everyone who is potentially going to be inspired by what it is you have to transmit.
I love that so much. I think you’ve given me an idea here, which is even after you’ve published your book, I think you can write that love letter to call them in.
Totally, totally
Great idea. Thanks Karen. How do you align your message in your book? I think we’ve talked about that quite a bit and connecting with your reader and I think the love letter you just shared does it? Yeah. Good. So back to the purpose of your book, you’ve written your love letter. You’ve thought about who you’re here to serve. You’ve thought about your own purpose. You’ve thought about the purpose of your book, and now it’s time to pull all that kind of together so that you’re getting a feeling, a grounded feeling of I’m here to inspire through my story. You’ve written your love letter about these are the people who need to hear it. Maybe there are people going through something similar or people who are in a similar crisis, whatever it might be. And that’s going to end up being the purpose of your book to connect your message with the people who need to hear it.
There are different things you can do inside your book to make sure that the interior of the book also is a success, but calls to like for further information on this chapter, I go over here and get my opt-in and get my free download if you will, or watch a video or whatever it is, you can use it for lead generation. It can be an intro to your work and have people go to your website. It could just be your legacy, but understand which are all of those you’re going to put in. If it’s just your legacy. This is what I stand for. This is my body of work in the world, and I wanted to write a book. That’s perfect. Just, just think about these things upfront. It will help you have a more structured, streamlined book. And then we’re going to talk about more about this in, in a minute, but platform is social media and email lists and all those kinds of things about connecting with your reader so that they actually know you have a book doing some of this work upfront, but it’s also being really clear about who you are and who you stand for, because that’s what you build your platform from.
And again, I think this is a place where platform used to be. And I think this is a place where sometimes there’s hiccups, people think platform is like super, super tight narrow. And again, I think as we kind of emerge into this more creative energy of the 2020s, if you will that your platform can be overarching and expansive and you can be the voice of your platform. And I would even say, and I just add this because you know, sometimes we get the culture, right. And we don’t have the platform yet. And that’s okay. It’s important, but it doesn’t mean don’t write the book. Don’t wait. So you have 15,000 followers on Instagram or whatever to write the book, you can use the book to build your platform. It’s not, you don’t have to always have platform in place first. And there are ways to still sell your book and to get it out into the world and to use it as a place to take a quantum leap into raising your field of impact and influence. Yeah.
I think our favorite subject, right? Take collectively. So I’ll talk about Fairfield. Talk about faith care we all have, right? Let’s just admit it. We all have fear and I am not a believer of you just feel the fear and do it anyway. If that worked, we’d all be doing what we want to do. Cause we’ve heard that for so long. Right. And I don’t think it works. I think when we can tune in to our fear and let’s start by saying, we don’t always recognize it. It’s fear. It shows up as avoidance, it shows up as blocks. It shows up as procrastination. It shows up as eating chocolate in so many ways, right? But let’s say, okay, maybe this is sphere. I encourage you to start thinking about what’s the information you need. What if fear was just the emotion that tells you, you need more information to proceed.
So if I say to you, I think you’ve got a book inside of you. I would love for you to present something to our publishing company and you go, Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly do that. I don’t know what to say. I’m not a writer. And all this self negative self talk starts going. I would encourage you to start asking questions because I think what’s happening is your brain is saying, I don’t have enough information to take the next step. So if you said to me, well, I’m not a writer I can’t possibly write. I will say, we’re going to help you get the information that’s in that cool brain and heart of yours. And we’ll work with editors to turn it into polished writing. And then you might say, okay, maybe I could do that. If you say, well, I don’t know what to say and say, well, let’s talk through what you really believe in the world.
And then maybe you will know what to say and you look okay, and all, if you just ask questions, when you start getting answers, it starts calming the brain down so that you can move forward. So when you have ever have a trigger like chocolate or negative self-talk or avoidance or procrastination, any of those things ask yourself. If you just need more information before you can take a step, sometimes you may not have that information right away. But if you are aware of it, that information will come to you and you stay open and start asking questions, information will come and you will have enough enough confidence to be able to move through the fear without just feel the fear and do it anyway. Right? Right. Sometimes fear is just an adrenaline rush. It’s excitement. Right? I’ve told a story about going on TEDx stage and the night before, I’m like, I’m not doing that.
I’m not getting on the stage. Somebody just call in sick. I, you know, I can’t pass it. Like all the fear was coming up. And then by the next morning it was like, I still felt that way, but it had turned into adrenaline rushes and excitement. So it changed a little bit. And so pay attention. Cause it can feel the same if you’re not like really tuning in to see what the information is. What’s the, the information that you need based on the emotion coming in. And the last thing I want to say about fear is we all get scared. Everybody. When we think we’re going to be more visible, even you say, yeah, I want to be famous. Then you think, except what if my cousin second removed sees me talk about faith and fear that women think it’s crazy. Or what if my ex boss or my high school teacher or my daughter or my spouse or my best friend.
Right? We get scared of the visibility. What if over calls? Oh my gosh, I’m not ready for Oprah. So then our brain goes all the way out to a year or three years ahead. Stay in the moment. Don’t panic. If you work with Ken and I and our publishing company, I promise you, we’re not going to let you embarrass yourself with anything you might say on paper, we will help you work through it. And the first steps of writing a book are just that first steps. Anything that you write today may or may not end up in the book, but what happens is we start writing and we think, well, my mother can’t read that and we stop writing and I’m inviting you to not worry about the visibility piece yet, because you don’t know yet. If it’s going to end up in the book. Yeah. Karen, talk about faith because that’s the flip of this.
So I, you know, faith is always think of faith is the anchor that calls you forward when the fear starts to take hold. You know, we don’t, we, we talked about you don’t really have to have your big why in terms of the book, but it is good to have at least a sense of why a faith-based, why for your work and you’re showing up for yourself in your life. So, you know, I think that, you know, I always talk about this in the context, honestly, of my own personal experience. You know, one of my bestselling books I wrote when my fifth daughter had a baby daughter at 43, I was a full-time single parent with four teenagers at the time with this baby. And and I wrote this book that I submitted to the publisher. I had a publishing contract, it was due and I didn’t back it up and I lost the whole flipping book.
And, and, and, and so let me just, it just was like, okay, what am I going to do? Because I had to recreate the whole thing. And I had to recreate the whole thing, like in two weeks. So I had to really, really ground deep in my first of all, my faith and the faith for me, for me personally, was a very spiritual faith. I really had to say, okay, God, look, I need to get this book done. You called me out to write this book. I got to get it done. I need some technological help. I need some help with time and timing. I need you to help me bend time. If you need to, to get this all done. And I need you to make sure that for the next two weeks, the baby doesn’t go through a growth spurt. The baby’s not going to teach you the exit that all the kids are going to be normal for two weeks, let’s get it done.
So there was definitely this sort of faith that I had to call on and, you know, and sort of in hand and, you know, hand in hand with that on a more concrete level, I knew that this book was going to be the launching off point for my business. And at that same time, I was also facing, you know, four teenagers that needed to go to college. And I didn’t have college tuition. I had lost everything in my divorce. And, you know, I, I had to have the faith that this work was going to catapult me forward. And that I grounded myself in the idea that I literally can’t fail because if I fail, I’m not just failing to write the book or rewrite the book at that time. I’m also letting my family down. And that was that’s for me as a mother, as a full-time at that point, still a full-time mother.
That, that was my purpose. And it was part of my purpose was to be a good mother and to have the support for those kids. So, you know, in those moments, when I was like, I can’t do this, I, I gotta get some sleep. I gotta, I, you know, I, I got to go to the grocery store and get some artistry, chicken, you know, I don’t have time for this. I could fall back on too. You don’t have the option to not do this. And that wasn’t a pressurized way. It was just a, this is part of my purpose in the world to serve these kids. And of course for me, I also had a deep sense of purpose and mission around the material that I was actually sharing. So, you know, being connected to whatever it is that allows you to drop into the faith that you can do it, you will do it, you will get it done.
That nothing from the outside is going to disrupt you, that you’re not going to find those soft spaces where you surrender to the fear and let you know the triggers take you away from the bigger reason why you’re doing what you’re doing. And, and I think honestly, and again, when I coach writers, you know, part of it too, is cultivating a writing practice, not, and it’s hard for some people to do this because not everybody has rhythm and it doesn’t mean you have to do it same way, same day, every, every day, the same. But you have to strengthen the practice of having faith that you’re going to get it done. And that means even if you write three words one day, and that happens some days, you’re still actively grounding yourself in the action necessary to call yourself forward to complete the book.
Hmm. That’s beautiful. There’s something about the practice when you shared that, that it is something about anchoring the faith through the action. You know, like I’m, I’m following through. I have faith that I’ll be that I’m called. I have faith that this will happen. And to prove it I’m writing my three words today.
Totally. So my grandmother used to call that praying with your feet, you pray with your feet. You, you have the faith that it’s going to be okay, you’re going to get it done. But, but you know, the reality is, and the third dimensional world, you have to write the book. If you want to be a New York times, bestselling author, ferries are not going to come and write it for you and leave the manuscript at the foot of your bed in the morning, you gotta do the work.
I do have clients that are like, nah, I don’t want to send you work. I don’t want to send you writing this week.
Well, I think just to add to that, you know, you are going to have dry spells it’s normal. And I knew, you know, we do have strategies and techniques to aid, get you unstuck and B you don’t always have to write your book by writing it. There are other methods that we know how to use as well, that can help you create the material without you having to write it technically.
And on that note, this is a big piece. I think, writing how it takes that faith and really forces you to Uplevel. I don’t like that word Uplevel, but there’s something about elevating your own personal power and internally upleveling yourself. How does, how does that work with faith?
Well, I think first of all, when we get called, is it, this is such an interesting and complex topic. And when we get called to write a book and I really do think we get called, right? It’s that thing that wakes you up in the middle of the night, you’re like, Oh, I got to write this book, but I’m going to read the book. I’m scared, but I just feel good. You get called. You know, the first thing that has to happen is you have to step into the idea that you’re getting called because you have a unique and vital and irreplaceable role to play in the cosmic plan. And part of that role is to transmit that message. And a lot of times to get into the, to get started in that process of crafting that book, you have to really heal your own self-worth because that book might not happen without you.
That message might not happen without you in the way that it needs to happen, the way you’re being called to, and you really have to deal with your humility. And, and I I’m use the word humility as a spectrum. You know, I think we allowed him to think about humility and that sort of like, I’m not worthy, I’m not worthy, I’m not worthy. And I think that’s where we tend to go. But, but, and that’s certainly one facet of humility, but there’s also the humility of knowing your right place. So humility and becoming humble with the process. And consequently really upleveling, as you say means you really start to embrace no less than my place and no more than my space. It’s not ego. You’re not going to go into ego and be like, I did this book, you know,
Again, that’s important,
Not ego. It’s about standing in your right place and saying, this is my right place. This is my job to do this. And I honor it. And I’m going to nurture myself throughout this process. And I’m going to set boundaries around this process so that I am creating the time or the integration or the research or the time for my practice or the time to learn and grow, whatever it is, because you’re valuable enough to give that to yourself because you’re the only one who can do this in the whole entire cosmos. And to step into that space, it’s, it’s huge. You really, it will reframe the way you think about yourself in every aspect of your life. You will stop waiting for other people to create space for you and start creating your own space and stand in the own power of your voice. And, you know, truly to me, writing a book is a spiritual process. And part of the spiritual process is that you really learn how to collaborate with source and to find your right place in that place of service to source.
Yeah. And, and I think this, what we’re talking about here, and the next slide, or two is all part of that, where you have to let go of expectations, both of yourself and other people, you just have to step into this place where you know that this is where you’re supposed to be set the intention that you will get the information you need to be guided and just plant the seeds and not expect to be responsible for every, for the growing process, right? It’s your job to actually plant the seed. And then when you’re going through this, when you’re actually going through this, and you’re working with a book coach, you are forced to get really clear about what you’re going to stick your stake in the sand about what you really think, what you really are saying. I’m willing to put this out there, right?
You will find your voice. And that alone is a huge internal upleveling. And sometimes to get to that space where you say, yes, this is what I really believe. You’re going to work through all kinds of triggers. You’re going to work through, maybe your teacher telling you, you talk too much in class. You’re gonna don’t work through your mother saying that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Right? All these things just come up. Your best friend is I had a friend tell me once all you’ll never speak for a living. I’m like, you know, I spend my life on podcast. He’s dated. And so you gotta work through all this stuff, right? Can I get another little pink there? Because
I think this is something else that, that sometimes this Verizon people, when you start to put language to things, cause words are like crazy powerful. You can actually use the cadence of language to splice DNA in a lab. When you start to use words, you start to invoke the experiences that you’re sharing back into your life. So it also gives you kind of who over in a, and not in a, you know, not in a crazy, like, it’s not going to completely destroy your life kind of way, but, but you do kind of have to go back and look at what, what are you writing about? And it comes back around for you to, again, deal with it and grow from it even more expansively.
And, and he’ll, yeah. I have a a client writing a book about grief and, and in the process of writing about that, she had to regrade some of the things you and I both have clients that talk about their own personal healing experiences, either with a devastating disease or a car accident. And then they have to relive parts of that. And then it triggers. But when you work with a book coach, when you work with an editor you’re in a safe place to, right. So it will be a healing that will be healing for you. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And all of this translates into personal growth and who doesn’t want that. So I think we’re all like, ah, enough personal growth. Right. But it just, it’s personal growth to me is not like growing into something else. It’s growing into more of my own expand itself. So don’t think about it as some people say, well, you have to like strip yourself down to nothing and rebuild. I don’t, I don’t set the way I look at it. I look at it as growth becoming more of who you are. Yeah. I think that’s, that’s,
I, I think it’s become more aligned with your authentic self-expression. Yeah,
Totally nice. So one of the things that I often get is, well, I’m not a writer and I’m not an author and I don’t know how to become a writer and I don’t know how to become an author. Right. And what I will say is you don’t have to be either to get started when you become a writer. When you get those three words down on paper. When I use that, now, Karen, those three words down and you suddenly become a writer, you do not need to know. So we have one editor who’s always on, on about us with authors who have hanging part, part of puzzles. I don’t even know how you say it, Karen.
I don’t even know what it is. So all these years I’ve written four books all these years in publishing. I still don’t know what that is. She keeps trying to explain it to me. Right? That’s what editors for you do not need to know how to unhang it. An editor will help you on hang it. If you have one, you do need to know all the different kinds of verbs and adverbs and feel like you’re going back to middle school English. If you have those skills, does it help? Absolutely. Will it make you a better writer out of the gate? Absolutely. Might you pick up some new knowledge going through the editing process? Absolutely. But if you don’t have it, don’t let that stop you from getting started because you will work with a really good editor to help Polish your work. So those are just excuses.
Plenty of books have been written by people who don’t know how to spell myself included. Right? That’s what spell check is for you become an author as soon as you publish. So as soon as your book is published, you are a public while you’re an author. When you write, which are a published author, as soon as it’s published. And so in that space, as you grow, you suddenly become a writer and you suddenly become a published author. And so the only difference is you right after you get your three words on paper, and you’re an author published author after you publish. And in the meantime you just start all of that. Yeah. And I think that’s, that’s a just start and I might even say, and doughnut it yourself while you’re writing. Yeah. Don’t judge. Reader’s gonna fix it all. Anyway. That’s, that’s the biggest, that’s probably the biggest mistake. I see people doing, trying to edit as I go, and we don’t get to the good stuff where you’re going to rewrite your book several times. And so it’s just part of the process. You’re going to rewrite it. We just want to get everything out on paper first.
Yeah.
And then having said all of that make up your own rules. Right? Current. Totally, totally. I want you to do that bouncing thing again, totally break the rules. You got to do it your way, and we’re all gonna do it differently. Some of you are going to do it in the traditional way, where you go to a writer’s retreat for two weeks and you sit on the beach. We’ve had people who’ve done it that way. And you know, they make me jealous. Some of you are going to not write in order. Some of you are gonna write half of it and record half of it and have it transcripted. Some of you are going to, there’s so many permutations, you’re going to find your own way. As long as you stay in service to what you’re doing.
Nice.
So I want to give some people something to really take away from this today. I’m sure everyone will get some nuggets, but some something concrete that you can go do to really anchor your book. And that is to write about two to 300 words of your back cover. And what that means is if I walk into a bookstore and I pick up your book, I want to read something like after reading this book, you will know the three things you must do to be CA become totally enlightened in the next 24 hours more. When you read this book, you will know exactly how to make $17 million before your 21st birthday. Right? Whatever your message is. I want that on the back of the book, is that going to end up on the back of the book? Probably not because it hasn’t been edited and polished and gone through this whole process we’ve been talking about, but what it will do is anchor really quickly and focus what the book’s about.
You can use up to about 300 words in there, and you can also write a couple of sentences about yourself, cause that will go on the back cover as well. And what we’d like to see is what is the reader going to get? What is my benefit? If I read this book, what am I going to get out of it? I’m going to be inspired. I’m going to get knowledge. I’m going to learn how to reinvent myself, whatever that is. And is it tips, is it a process? Is it an inspiring story? A little bit about the method of how I’m going to get there and then something about you. That’s a fun fact and also lends me to know that you’re the expert and you’re the one to guide me through this process. So that all goes into your back cover. Anything to add on that, Karen?
No. I mean, the only thing I would say is, I mean, you and I both have our clients do this part first, which can feel really, it’s ironic that probably the hardest part of writing your book is doing the back cover first. But, but it’s such a great process of distilling down again, the purpose of your book. And it’s also, you know, if you get stuck and hung up on it, go back to the love letter that you wrote to your client, because that helps you really, I think, clarify again, if you get confused about what it is that you want to do. And I think the other point that I would just throw out here is that sometimes in the process of writing the back cover of the book, you realize that what you’re actually writing is five books and that you don’t have to jam it all into one book. It’s okay for you to, to do several books. You don’t have to do all of them, but do the one that excites you the most first and start there and keep working at it.
Yeah. Nice. So not actually, everyone has two pieces of homework, the love letter and the back cover. So what’s next, Karen?
So, you know, one of the things that we like to do, because we really believe in supporting people who have big ideas is we like to talk to you. If you have a book idea, you have an idea for something you want to share with the world. Maybe you don’t know if it can translate to a book. Maybe you don’t know if it’s courses, you don’t know what it is. If you will have an idea we want to hear from you. So call us, you can call our phone numbers right here on the, you can email us at publisher@gracepointpublishing.com. Let’s talk. And let’s talk about how we can best support you in getting your message and your inspiration out into the world so that you can serve that place in the cosmic plan. If you will, that only you can serve and give that, make that contribution to the world that you came here to do.
Thank you, Karen, for that. Anything else? I don’t as beautiful. Thank you, Michelle.